So Just Who Are These Undecided Voters?

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Voters in Concord, N.H., in February.CreditCreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times

By Lynn Vavreck

Sept. 30, 2016

There are fewer than 40 days left in the presidential campaign, and most Americans have made up their minds. But a sizable minority of likely voters have still not taken sides in this extraordinary election, and as the race tightens, their choices become increasingly important.

What do we know about the undecideds? Data from the RAND Corporation’s Presidential Election Panel Study and weekly surveys conducted by the online research firm YouGov for The Economist give us a trove of data. Among the many thousands who have completed the most recent YouGov surveys, roughly 8 percent of registered voters who plan to vote are undecided. In the RAND data, about 11 percent of registered voters are undecided. Estimates from other recent polls place the number of undecided voters this cycle between 2 to 12 percent.

Despite the possibility that there may be more undecided voters this year than in previous elections, the undecideds of 2016 look a lot like those who remained unsure at this point in 2012. They are less interested in politics and the news, less partisan, and less likely to hold opinions on issues dominating campaign discussions. Essentially, they think less about politics.

According to the YouGov data collected since June, only 29 percent of undecided voters pay attention to the news “most of the time” compared with 57 and 64 percent of those who have already decided to cast ballots for Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump, respectively. They are also less likely to have watched any of the political conventions.

Undecided voters are also less engaged in terms of partisanship, mainly placing themselves in the partisan middle, even when given the chance to say they lean slightly one way or the other. Still, more than half of undecided voters have a partisan leaning. In both sets of data, the undecideds are split between identifying as Democrats and Republicans, a pattern we first noted in 2012.

There are some demographic differences between undecided voters and those who have made up their minds, but they are small relative to the differences in political interest and engagement. Women are slightly more likely than men to be undecided, younger voters more likely than older ones. There are also small differences across racial groups. Latinos are more likely to be undecided at this point than blacks; whites are in between.

These descriptive differences are negligible compared with differences relating to politics and policy. The YouGov data reveal that undecided voters are much less likely to have positions on issues driving the campaign. On the question of whether the United States should build a wall on its border with Mexico, a position central to Mr. Trump’s campaign for over a year, 28 percent of undecided voters are not sure whether they support or oppose this idea. That’s in contrast to only 7 percent of Mr. Trump’s committed voters (and 11 percent of Mrs. Clinton’s).

Similarly, undecided voters are roughly twice as likely to be unsure whether the minimum wage should be raised or whether college should be free.

The RAND data underscore this indecision. Seventeen percent of undecided registered voters are not sure whether they have a favorable or unfavorable view of the Republican Party (relative to 3 percent of Trump supporters and 13 percent of Clinton supporters). Similarly, 17 percent are unsure about their rating of the Democratic Party. Even on favorability ratings of the president, undecided voters are three times as likely as supporters of either major party candidate to say they “don’t know” how to rate him.

Where these undecided voters will end up is hard to say. More than 40 percent of them have a favorable view of President Obama in both the YouGov and RAND surveys, which is not true of voters who have already decided to vote for Mr. Trump. Yet based on previous reports of their vote in the 2012 election, many of this year’s undecided voters cast a ballot for Mitt Romney. If you believe they will return to partisan traditions, it could be good news for Mr. Trump. But it’s equally possible they are undecided Romney-voters because of Mr. Trump.

In 2012, roughly half the people who were undecided at the end of the campaign stayed home. The other half split in similar proportions to the overall vote share. Despite the many ways that the 2016 election has been unexpected and unusual, the characteristics of undecided voters is not one of them. This may mean that we can expect half of them to stay home and the other half to split similarly to those who have decided already. They may be holdouts, but they are unlikely to be pivotal.

Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science at U.C.L.A., is a co-author of “The Gamble,” about the 2012 presidential campaign. Follow her on Twitter at @vavreck.